


i carry your heart

by morningssofgold



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-24 18:34:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22062514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morningssofgold/pseuds/morningssofgold
Summary: Just as Dani spoke the poem’s final line, she looked up. Feeling Malcolm’s presence, she locked eyes with him over their now sleeping daughter, knowing exactly how he felt whenever he read the same line nearly every night.Dani reflects on how her life has changed being a mom and married to Malcolm.
Relationships: Malcolm Bright/Dani Powell
Comments: 10
Kudos: 59





	i carry your heart

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [i carry it in](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22023781) by [morningssofgold](https://archiveofourown.org/users/morningssofgold/pseuds/morningssofgold). 



> @2amEuphoria wanted soft mom Dani so I tried my best to deliver;)

“What?” Dani asked, noticing Malcolm’s translucent blue eyes go far away and turn wistful. He got like this sometimes and though gently, she always prodded him to open up. She knew he had a lifetime of burying pain and hurt deep within, hiding behind his pristine exterior. Dani always wanted him to feel safe enough to go to her with anything. She’d wanted that long before she could put a name to the feelings she had for him. That never-ending need to comfort and care for him, someone who had never known comfort or care before.

Malcolm smiled a bit over the rim of his coffee mug, “It’s funny, back then I wanted ‘normal’ so badly but I don’t think I wanted it badly enough.” He watched as his wife put his medication in the drawer behind the island before placing a bowl of Cheerios in front of their two year old daughter, something Zahra happily accepted. 

Malcolm knew he didn’t exactly have normal as most people thought of it, it was still _him_ after all. That said, those visits to his father had gradually stopped. Whenever they had a particularly twisted case, he solved it without Martin’s help and the mind games that went along with it.

Dani never liked those visits and she definitely didn’t like the person her husband would become when he returned to her. Shell-shocked and haunted, completely reverting back to the lost ten year old boy he had been, not the man she knew and had said her vows to. She never pressed him about it though. Dani knew when Malcolm was fully ready to put Martin behind him, to cure the infection that he had allowed to grow and fester, he would. And he did. 

He’d cut his father off completely when he found out that Dani was pregnant with Zahra. Malcolm had known right then that he couldn’t continue to allow Martin access to his mind. He had to be there for his wife. He had to be present, be the rock she had always been for him. 

He knew Martin kept up with everything his former family did. Malcolm remembered the night terrors that had plagued him for weeks after his father mockingly complemented him on “choosing a beauty,” referring to his and Dani’s engagement announcement photo that had appeared in all of the society pages. The photo itself had been at the behest of his mother. 

Malcolm remembered all of those nights he stayed up watching the steady rise and fall of Dani’s chest after his mind had tortured him with so many images of her as one of The Surgeon’s victims. He could imagine Martin’s demented glee at the news of his son creating another Whitly. No child of his would ever be a Whitly and he couldn’t–wouldn’t allow that poison to be planted in his mind.

“What do you mean?” Dani asked, bringing him back to the present, absently combing her fingers through Zahra’s curls–the curls they shared.

“I guess, I mean that I wanted ‘normal’ but I wanted it to be easy and I wanted it on my terms. It doesn’t really work that way though–or at least, that’s what Gabrielle said once.” 

His therapist had been right and he had run from his connection with Dani for the longest time because he knew it wouldn’t be easy. It would be all-consuming and he honestly didn’t think he deserved to be loved like that. Not the son of The Surgeon.

“That’s actually pretty good coming from that crackpot.” Dani rolled her eyes just as Malcolm knew she would.

“ _Dani!_ That's very unkind of you!” Malcolm mock admonished. Dani was still incredibly though irrationally sore over some advice Gabrielle had given him in relation to a woman whose name he could scarcely remember at this point.

“Mommy? Whas crackpot?’” Zahra asked around a mouthful of Cheerios.

Malcolm snorted behind his coffee mug. “Nothing, baby. Finish your breakfast,” Dani said, making a funny face at her daughter, squeezing her little cheeks, earning her laughter that sounded like the ringing of silver bells.

“You know, if I had run into you leaving Gabrielle’s office. I would’ve asked you out on a date.”

“No, you wouldn’t have. Besides, I didn’t sleep with you on the first date.” 

“Or the second, or the third or the fourth…” Malcolm laughed at the murderous glare Dani shot his way over Zahra’s curly head, happy that her arms were currently occupied by their daughter or that remark would’ve earned him a punch to the shoulder. As he could personally attest to, his wife had the meanest right cross he’d ever seen. Thinking back to that time she'd slugged him unconscious during a club drug-induced hallucination, Malcolm wondered how he’d ever thought there could be any other woman for him, “Think of it this way; she got _a date,_ you got _a baby_. I’d say you got the better end of the bargain.”

“ _I’m_ the baby!” Zahra chimed into her parents’ conversation before collapsing into giggles.

“Yes, you are! Mommy’s baby,” Dani covered Zahra’s forehead and cheeks with kisses and laughter. Squealing in delight, Zahra’s little arms tightened around her mother’s neck. Malcolm watched as his entire heart disappeared down the hallway as Dani left with Zahra to get her ready for daycare.

––––––––––––––––––

Their leads vanished on their new case–a double homicide and Gil eventually sent the team home. All of them with the exception of Malcolm. Much to his intense displeasure, he had been forced to finish his profile.

“No, Bright, ‘it’s all up here’ isn’t gonna work this time,” Gil said pointing to Malcolm’s excuse _du jour_ whenever he wanted to duck out on work.

She watched in amusement as Malcolm went back to the conference room, his brows furrowed, muttering under his breath about “Firing Grandpa” looking very much like Zahra when denied the opportunity to stay up past bedtime.

“I heard that! You can’t fire Grandpa, Grandpa can fire _you_ though.” 

Dani couldn’t hide the laughter that spilled out from behind her hand at what was nearly an everyday occurrence between her husband and her boss, the man who had looked out for her since she was nineteen, had given her away at her wedding and held her hand as she went into labor. The man she loved like a father.

–––––––––––––––––––

It was always strange being in the apartment without Malcolm. Everything about it reminded Dani of him, the medieval weaponry was still mounted on the wall though now with combination locks and there was still a parakeet that twittered away in the corner. The only real differences between her first time in this apartment and now are the photos sprinkled throughout. Most notably, their wedding photo in a silver Tiffany frame–a gift from Jessica–on the mantle. As well as a large black and white photo of Malcolm on one knee, kissing her bare nine months pregnant belly while she looked down at him, her then waist-length curls spilling over her shoulders, an expression of utter and complete love on her face, an expression so soft that she hadn’t even known she was capable of making it, mounted on the wall.

Dani had just finished giving Zahra a bath, an adventure that always ended up with her nearly submerged in the tub herself due to her daughter’s complete inability to keep still long enough to get clean. As she sat on the bathroom floor, gently toweling off Zahra’s curls, she still couldn’t believe that this was was her life. That the eccentric former FBI special agent, the one who’d literally chopped off a man’s hand with an axe on the very first day she’d met him, would end up giving her everything she never thought she wanted. 

Dani didn’t realize how lonely and empty she had been in those days before Malcolm and Mini Malcolm filled her heart to capacity, her loves giving her more than she ever thought she could have. Her husband had given her many gifts over their two years of marriage, each more expensive and extravagant than the last but no gift came close to the little girl in her lap. The one currently occupying herself with the rubber ducky toys she absolutely needed for bath time. Malcolm always said that she'd saved him and though that was true in the literal sense due to their history, Dani knew for certain that he’d saved her too.

Growing up in the Bronx, Highbridge to be exact, Dani had to be hard. She had to be hard to survive on her own, something she had been doing since nineteen. She had to be hard to become a police officer. Being pretty and small, she knew she wouldn’t be respected so she had to earn that by not taking anything from anyone. She kept people at a distance. She trusted no one. That part of her had gotten worse ever since she’d overdosed on a dirty floor in the uncaring company of dealers and killers. Then Malcolm Bright came along and her life would never be the same. 

He’d unearthed everything she tried to hide. Malcolm had disarmed her without even trying. Dani’s need to protect the troubled profiler, the one with the prettiest blue eyes she’d ever seen, far outweighed her need to protect herself–to erect walls. Dani had known from the moment Malcolm's face had lit up like a little boy who’d received all of his birthday wishes when she grudgingly admitted that they were friends, that she wanted to keep him safe. That fiercely protective side of her, the one she didn’t know existed before she met her husband had only intensified after delivering Zahra. 

Malcolm teasingly called her “Mama Bear” but he couldn’t have been more correct. There was nothing she wouldn’t do to protect Zahra. Dani was immensely grateful when Malcolm told her in the very early stages of her pregnancy that he wouldn’t be going back to see Martin. Though sequestered far away in the depths of Claremont Psychiatric, Dani knew that if her daughter’s name so much as crossed The Surgeon’s lips, she’d have to kill him dead. 

––––––––––––––

“All done?” Zahra looked up at her expectantly, drawing her away from her venture down memory lane. 

“All done,” Dani said softly, leaning down to give her baby girl a kiss before getting one in return.

Once she’d gotten Zahra dressed for bed, selecting a plain white shirt and matching pajama shorts–the designer set had been a gift from Aunt Ainsley–the two of them settled in for the night. She'd received a text from Malcolm saying that he’d finished his profile and would be seeing them shortly. Realizing that she’d be going home alone, Dani had decided to take a shower in the precinct locker room. As with her husband, Dani couldn’t take her eyes off her daughter for a moment; let alone long enough for her to shower and wash her hair, especially now that Zahra had taken to scaling Malcolm’s bookshelves for fun.

Dani had also mastered the art of the quick change, shedding her work clothes: dark jeans and plain forrest green top in favor of a pair of her husband’s pajama pants and one of his old Harvard shirts. She owned many fancy French nightgowns, all courtesy of Malcolm but she eschewed all of them in favor the clothes she had been wearing to bed since she first started stying over, long before they were married.

“I guess we’re waiting up for Daddy, huh?” Zahra sat on Dani’s stomach as she lay down, surrounded by pillows that smelled like Malcolm’s shampoo. Zahra playfully clapped Dani’s hands together.

Dani saw her daughter everyday but it always amazed her just how much Zahra favored Malcolm in every way. Though there were things that Zahra had inherited from her such as her fair olive complexion and thick curly hair, literally _everything_ else was all Malcolm.

Malcolm's dark chestnut hair took on a lighter, more golden tone whenever touched by the sun’s rays—the exact same shade of Zahra's hair. JT had even remarked during one of Zahra’s many trips to the precinct to visit Grandpa that “At least now we know what Bright would look like as a girl.” And it was true, their faces were identical.

Zahra really was "baby Bright" as the team taken to calling her–a nickname she'd earned in many more ways than one. Zahra and Malcolm had the same heavily lashed ice blue eyes. The same little nose that was prone to cutely scrunching at the slightest thing. They both had dimples but Malcolm smirkingly claimed that Zahra had his. Dani’s husband and daughter had the same easy smile and curious, inquisitive nature. 

Jessica had once told her that Malcolm had been a serious child, his brow forever furrowed like a little adult. Zahra was a happy, playful little girl. Dani wondered if Malcolm would’ve been the same had everything not happened the way it did. She knew he wondered that as well and she was happy that seeing Zahra enjoy the childhood he should’ve had, helped Malcolm heal old wounds.

“Read Daddy poem, Mommy,” Zahra said as she rolled off of Dani’s chest, knowing their nightly routine. Dani knew exactly the one she meant. She watched from the doorway every night as they read an E.E. Cummings poem together before Malcolm tucked her in for bed. Dani propped herself up on one elbow to look down at her daughter, smiling softly as she looked into the doll-like face of the little person who meant more to her than life itself.

“‘I carry your heart with with me, I carry it in my heart, I am never without it,’” Dani gently traced a heart over Zahra’s chest with her fingertip, her voice breaking off into a whisper as she recited the words she knew by heart after hearing her husband say them so many times. 

\-----------

“‘By only me is your doing, my darling.’” 

Malcolm watched from just outside the bedroom as his wife recited the last line of the first stanza of the poem he read to their daughter nearly every night. Hoping not to attract notice, he got out his phone to record the incredibly sweet moment. 

Every memory, every photo and family video from his childhood had been stained by deception and cruelty. Malcolm wanted to document a moment that he’d never had himself, a moment of his daughter being loved by her mother unconditionally, no secrets or lies separating them.

“‘I carry your heart, I carry it in my heart.’” 

Just as Dani spoke the poem’s final line, she looked up. Feeling Malcolm’s presence, she locked eyes with him over their now sleeping daughter, knowing exactly how he felt whenever he read the same line nearly every night.

**Author's Note:**

> This is just more of my headcanons and my never ending weakness for baby Brightwell.


End file.
